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Friday, October 17, 2014

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are ocean places that are set aside like parks and are one of the most effective methods to conserve and protect the ocean. MPAs provide sanctuary for sea life so that food-webs can recover and thrive. When planned and managed effectively, MPAs shield ecosystems from harmful human practices such as destructive fishing practices, offshore oil and gas drilling and other industrial activities; coastal and estuarine areas serve as carbon sinks that can mitigate the impacts of climate change; they benefit the economies of coastal communities through businesses such as marine tourism and sustainable fisheries.

If we hope to keep benefiting from the ocean and its resources then we need to come up with ways to pay for the cost of establishing and managing MPAs over the long term.

Canada falls short

Canada maintains an international commitment through the Convention on Biological Diversity to protect ten percent of our national waters. Yet nationally, only one percent of our oceans and Great Lakes fall within a federally designated MPAs; on Canada’s Pacific coast, slightly more than three percent of the ocean is protected by MPAs.

In 2013 the Green Budget coalition estimated that the Government of Canada needed to invest a minimum of $35 million every year for three years in order to establish MPAs in five percent of Canada’s oceans. In June 2014 the government countered with a one-time investment of $37m to establish MPAs on all three coasts. Clearly there is a significant gap between the funds the federal government is willing to invest in MPAs and what is required to keep our oceans healthy and coastal communities prosperous.

Financing options for MPAs

Without government funding for MPAs, where will the money come from to support and maintain health oceans? Other countries have experimented with innovative financing mechanisms in support of marine protected areas and with enormous potential benefits at stake, Canada should be open to evaluating alternate financing models too.

All of these alternate funding strategies have potential to contribute to the protection of Canada’s oceans—but many of them have significant costs too. All of them require a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis before being proposed or adopted as financing tools for specific MPAs in Canada.